EPICTETUS SPEAKS
stoic messengers scouts of god
do nothing against your will and you will not suffer harm
anything beyond your power is nothing to you
if you have a favorite cup remember it might be broken
embracing your child you embrace a mortal
death is nothing terrible your life is not your own
leave all these things and never look behind
decline nothing that is offered and do not be bewildered:
let him wish nothing whoever would be free
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AMY KATHERINE CANNON is a writer and writing teacher living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from UC Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Gerard Creative Writing Endowment. She is the author of the mini-chapbook ‘to make a desert‘ (Platypus Press, 2016). Her work can be found in BOAAT, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Juked, and LIT, among other places. She is Managing Editor of Palaver Arts Magazine, a student publication.
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Read more by Amy Katherine Cannon:
A poem in BOAAT
A poem in Zócalo Public Square
They built themselves /
and they built us /
and they built a time /
and an idea of time.
perjury of lightning bolts: /
a fish spine rises from the trenches of the wound-up day, /
disrupting darkness
At night I become his missing arm. /
The one he lost on the front, looked for /
years later and didn´t find.
Bless the silence. Bless the hiss. Bless the punch. /
Bless the kiss. Bless the lemon. Bless the lime. //
Bless the fishbone in the throat of time.
I went out to my mailbox. /
Everything was addressed to a previous occupant (twice removed) /
who is now, /
according to my neighbors, / deceased.
Love among unequals is not a math problem. /
Is more profane than sacred. It means /
a woman available, without joy.
As we arrived /
the red-haired children /
were it seemed everywhere staring at us /
from behind things or caught /
frozen in the open like frightened rabbits
one man dies to save the many /
to open possibilities the way /
the sun enters the court of the sky
Chinese ladybugs adapt quickly. They do not care about tradition. They undersell the French ladybugs and take over their turf. You’d think there would be enough for all, aphids being what they are, but no. Oh no.
I learn it means people prone to sadness / who develop depression, but it reminds me / of a favorite Chinese restaurant: Double / Happiness...
